In general, when a fire breaks out in a building, each elevator mostly travels to its nearest floor and operations after that are suspended. This is because mainly secondary disasters by elevators are to be prevented. That is, in a usual fire emergency return operation of an elevator, when a fire broke out, the elevator is caused to land nonstop at an evacuation floor of the elevator in order to rapidly evacuate passengers who are already in the elevator, and a door open condition is kept for a long time in order to prevent the passengers from being shut in, and after that, the use of elevators during the fire is prohibited thereby to prevent secondary disasters.
Incidentally, apart from a usual elevator, there is also an emergency elevator of special construction which firefighters and the like use during a fire.
In recent buildings, however, improvements have been made in fire protection partitions and other techniques and floors except a floor on which a fire broke out and floors above this floor in close vicinity thereto are little affected by the fire and elevators are allowed to continue their usual operations.
As an operation method of elevators in which this is taken into consideration, for example, during a fire in a high-rise building, a group of elevators which serves zones including a floor on which the fire broke out is caused to perform a fire emergency return operation (performing a nonstop travel to the nearest floor and making a stop), priorities are assigned to the zones, and fire emergency return operations are performed for each zone in order of priority. By adopting this operation method, the duration of a usual operation on a floor which is little affected by the fire is extended (refer to Patent Document 1, for example).
Also, for example, according to the information from fire detection means installed on each floor, passengers are guided to a floor which permits safe evacuation by avoiding a floor on which a fire broke out (refer to Patent Document 2, for example).
Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 5-8954
Patent Document 2: Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 5-147849